Today, Capital One Financial Corp. announced that it is making AirKey, a proven authentication technology, available to financial institutions looking to strengthen their fraud prevention measures.
Fraud is on the rise and costing billions in losses each year, making the need to protect consumers more important than ever. Developed over the past seven years by Capital One, AirKey turns credit and debit cards into a tap-based authentication method that offers financial institutions a new and convenient tool in the fight against fraud.
AirKey makes it easy for customers to authenticate wherever their financial institution requires it. With the tap of an AirKey-enabled card to a smartphone, financial institutions can authenticate customers across a variety of use cases, from completing a 3D Secure (3DS) transaction to accessing a virtual card. For Capital One, AirKey is the most popular way customers activate their cards. Capital One has also seen a significant lift in mobile enrollment by offering AirKey.
AirKey has been used by Capital One customers for over four years, and there are more than 75 million Capital One cards equipped with AirKey technology in the market today. AirKey is backed by an extensive patent portfolio, including more than 300 U.S. patents and more than 400 issued and allowed patents in other jurisdictions.
“Customers prefer options when it comes to authentication—and having more tools in your toolbox to help prevent fraud is a necessity,” said Tom Poole, Senior Vice President, Emerging Payments at Capital One. “We want to make sure our industry is able to continue strengthening fraud prevention measures for consumers. AirKey is easy to use and builds on the trust and familiarity that consumers have with credit and debit cards, and we’re excited to bring this unique technology to other financial institutions.”
With AirKey, financial institutions can:
• Strengthen fraud prevention: AirKey offers financial institutions a new authentication method that can be used to protect customers along with more traditional methods like SMS one-time-password (OTP). With a tap, customers can authenticate to complete a 3DS transaction, provision a digital wallet and access a virtual card, among other actions.
• Increase authentication success: Offering multiple authentication methods means customers are more likely to complete the in-flight activity.
• Increase mobile enrollment: Customers with AirKey-enabled cards can tap to their smartphone to enroll in their financial institution’s mobile application.
• Enhance self-service options: Customers can also activate a new card with a tap to their smartphone. Customers can use AirKey to authenticate transactions without contacting customer service—enabling uninterrupted card usage when traveling overseas with no access to SMS.
“At Capital One, we recognize that having a multi-layered approach to fraud prevention is critical to keeping customers safe, and AirKey has offered us another powerful authentication tool to bolster our defenses and protect our customers,” said Chris Sparks, Managing Vice President, Card Fraud, Disputes and AML Strategy at Capital One. “Technologies are evolving and fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated, but AirKey has proven to be an innovative and effective authentication method. With AirKey, financial institutions can get the efficacy of a hardware token, but the convenience of something their customers already have in their wallets.”
AirKey uses near field communication to enable a credit or debit card to communicate with a smartphone. An applet is embedded into the secure element of a card, creating a cryptogram which is validated upon tapping to a smartphone. AirKey works on iOS & Android operating systems, and customers don’t need to download an additional application to use AirKey.
AirKey takes advantage of the pre-existing card manufacturing processes that financial institutions use, with a unique AirKey identifier tied to each customer at the time of card manufacturing. AirKey also benefits from the existing processes that are in place to continuously verify that a customer’s card remains in good standing and is deactivated if there is any sort of fraud activity or loss of card.
Capital One is also working with several partners to make AirKey available to a broad range of financial institutions.
“Emerging technologies are making it even more critical for financial institutions to have multiple methods to prevent fraud. While reducing fraud is the primary component of these new solutions, improving consumer experiences should also be a key value add,” said Hal Granoff, Vice President of Strategy at Prove. “With AirKey, Prove can take customer authentication to the next level by using the credit or debit card and smartphone as hardware authenticators, helping to protect bank customers while offering a frictionless experience.”